hey guys, this may seem like a stupid question but I am travelling and I cant really afford an external hard drive. I need to back up my laptop and reinstall windows... Is it possible to put evrything from C: onto D:, format C: and reinstall without losing anything off D:? I have a Toshiba Sattelite 600 with two 300GB hard disks, running vista home premium 32bit...
View 6 RepliesI am curious if Vista can be run from one of those portable external hard drives that I see in Staples, etc. rather than have to install another internal hard drive. I want to dual-boot with XP (already installed on an internal HD) and it would also be great if I can bring that external HD with us when we travel and hook it up to my wife's XP laptop and be able to boot up in Vista too. We need something for testing our software in Vista.
View 7 Replies View RelatedI have a Vista Ultimate 64 bit system using an ASUS striker II formula MB, Intel core 2 quad 2.66 mh CPU, 8 GB RAM. It was setup with 2 320 GB Seagate drives and a 500 GB Seagate drive in a RAID. A week and a half ago when shutting down the system, I got the install updates message. I clicked OK. Upon return, I found the system still running showing the BIOS screen. After reboot, I had a no operating system error. Using the Vista DVD to attempt repair, yielded a corrupt partition error. I attempted to reinstall Vista on one 320 GB drive. This gave a disk boot failure. After trying this and that, I ran chkdsk during boot which fixed the error. I want to recover my data. To facilitate recovery, I purchased 2 1.5 GB Seagate drives. I have attempted to format the drives using computer management and safe mode with command prompt. The drives will get to 73% format but no farther.
View 4 Replies View RelatedI have a Dell Inspiron 530 running Vista Home Premium x64 SP2.It has an internal card reader,a TEAC CA-200,that connects internally to the front USB connector on the motherboard.When the reader works,it shows up at four drive letters in Windows Explorer. The problem is that it doesn't work.When I first boot the PC the drives show up. After plugging in and ejecting a memory card a few times,all the drive letters go away and when I try plugging in a memory card it occasionally gives me a USB Error message that talks about a missing driver.It lists six USB ports with one listed as unknown - driver missing.If I open the case and unplug and re-plug the reader cable, the drives are all found again.Then in short order they'll disappear again.I've worked with Dell tech support and they've replaced the reader and its cable with no improvement.I've updated the chipset drivers with no improvement.Dell's last suggestion was to reinstall Windows from scratch. Doing a Google search for "dell card reader not recognized"finds a LOT of reports of this problem and I've already tried the suggested fixes. Unless you have the solution,I can see only two options going forward.Pretend the reader isn't there and get an external card reader,or get an internal card reader that uses a standard USB cable to plug into an available port on an added USB card.
View 4 Replies View RelatedI have a Dell computer, had it about three weeks. I have two hard drives in a serial ATA Raid 0 stripe 500GB each. They are controlled by Intel matrix storage manager software. I want to have the two hard drives separate, like drive C and Drive D In the Bios I have two choices ATA or Raid, I have tried both ways to have them separate, however still can't. I have to say that I found this forum by chance, by goodness I am glad I did with drivers for my scanner and printer.
View 9 Replies View RelatedOn Windows XP I used WinRAR for my backups because the OS lacked a decent backup system. To my surprise with Vista I still use WinRAR for my backups as that OS doesn't seem to have a decent backup system either.
I want to backup files from internal drive C to a physically separate internal drive D. Drive D won't show up. What comes closest seems to be ''The location is either the system disk (the disk that Windows is installed on?also called the C drive) or the boot disk (the disk that Windows uses to start your computer?also called the startup disk)as Windows XP is installed on drive D.
The manufacturer of my PC provided me with a New Imaged Hard drive. My old drive was working fine except it had some pre-installed software on it that could not be removed and could cause conflicts. The manufactiurer wants the old Hard drive returned. The old drive has some senitive personal information on it so I am reluctant just to pack it up and return it.
I have done some research about how to wipe off all information on a Hard drive before donating a PC, etc......but all I have read is very complicated and I am not comfortable in proceedding following any of the processes. Keeping in mind, I am not erasing the Hard drive with my PC's OS on it, (although the Old drive still has an OS on it). I can connect the OLD drive as a 2nd Internal drive....and than proceed to Wipe it Clean before returning it.
Surely there must be an easy, simple process for someone with limited computer knowledge to wipe a 2nd Internal Hard drive clean of all data so that no one could access any information off that drive....
I've added and extra hard drive because I'm always low on disk space but I can't get the PC to recognise the new drive. SATA 2 and 3 are greyed out and I don't know how to change it.
View 7 Replies View RelatedI just installed a new internal hard drive (SATA). I want to use this drive only for storage (not boot-up).
When I try to access it via "My Computer" the drive is not shown. When I try to find it in "Device Manager" it is not shown. When I try to set it up in the BIOS, that field is "read only"... I cannot highlight it to change it. I have made sure all cables are secure. I even swapped the power source of my existing hard drive with the new hard drive to ensure power is OK. How do I set up this hard drive? My PC is a Dell Inspiron 531S, running Windows Vista Home Edition 32bit.
I have 2 pcs one with xp pro, other is vista business 32bit on laptop. Using a 750gb samsung hd753Lj internal hard drive in a sumvision external enclosure with usb2 and e-sata connection, but i only have usb connection. ALl works fine on xp computer, but when i plug into vista i get the error in the system tray saying "usb device not recognised". In device manager it says "unknown device." have tried all 4 usb ports on laptop, have tried using it via mains powered usb hub and still no joy.
View 4 Replies View RelatedWas just checking some information in my pc, and i noticed both of the Hard drives were quite hot, theres no problems with the fans or anything in there so im not sure if theres a problem or they just get like that. The pc has been on for alot of the day and alot has been installed on it since they are new.
View 7 Replies View RelatedI have an Existing Vista install on HD1 and want to install Windows 7 on HD2.Was going to make HD2 the Primary Drive. Is there a way I can alternately boot to the HD1 Drive if I need to?
View 9 Replies View RelatedI have recently upgraded to an Asus P5K-E motherboard. It support AHCPI SATA. I'm running Vista x64 on a Samsung HD753LJ 750GB drive. Shortly after installing I checked the Device Manager which showed the drive running in PIO Mode 4. I kept trying to set it back to DMA mode but to no avail. However, using HD Tune 2.55 it says my drive is running in UDMA Mode 8. I never knew it went that high.
View 5 Replies View RelatedI have 8 SATA drives (4 in a PCI Promise SATA controller and 4 in the motherboard controller) in my Vista Ultimate 64, and I would like to keep them spinned down most the time. I use power saving but only the PCI drives are shutting down after x minutes, the motherboard drives are still on. In windows XP worked fine. I also noticed that when I delete a file, the drives spin up again. Could be any windows service interfering? I have all the hardware drivers well updated.
View 8 Replies View RelatedI recently purchased a computer on e-bay. I did not know it was a server. I has a aid configuration. I bought Vista Basic. When I try to load it it says it does not detect any hard drives. Is there a way around this? Can Vista basic be loaded on this system?
View 7 Replies View RelatedI have a program on an external USB hard drive. I want to run the program from that HD. It doesn't run properly because it needs to write files to it's folder, and it doesn't have permission to. If I turn User Account Control off, then everything works just fine, however I don't want to turn it off. Is there anything else I can do to get the program to work properly with UAC turned on? Should the program be writing files to a specific folder? I tried setting the permissions of the folder to 'full control', but all that seems to do is set the permissions on each individual file that currently exists in the folder.
View 5 Replies View RelatedWhen I get to the part of vista installation where it asks which hard drive I would like to install to it says there are no hard drives found. I have checked multiple times that the hard drive is hooked up correctly, but they are still not found. My hard drive is a Western Digital SATA SE Caviar 500GB. Also, I have looked for SATA drivers that came with my mobo (GIGABYTE GA-X38-DS4) but I don't see any that apply to what I need, as the only drivers that they appear to have are ones for AHCI/RAID configurations which I am not using.
View 4 Replies View RelatedWhen I get to the part of vista installation where it asks which hard drive I would like to install to it says there are no hard drives found.I have checked multiple times that the hard drive is hooked up orrectly, but they are still not found.My hard drive is a Western Digital SATA SE Caviar 500GB.Also,I have looked for SATA drivers that came with my mobo (GIGABYTE GA-X38-DS4) but I don't see any that apply to what I need, as the only drivers that they appear to have are ones for AHCI/RAID configurations which I am not using.
View 4 Replies View RelatedI just added two new 1TB My Book external USB 2.0 hard drives to my system. They come formatted and partitioned, but it is formatted FAT32, all of my other drivers are NTFS and so I went in to the Windows Vista disk management tool (sorry I don't remember what it is actually called but it allows you to see all of your drives, partitions, etc.) to do a quick format to NTFS. However, it seems to be taking hours to do this.
I am guessing and this is my question. Am I right in assuming that the reason this is not a quick format is because it is having to do a full format in order to convert the drive from FAT32 to NTFS? How long should it take to format a 1TB drive?
I recently installed Vista Home Premium and one of my hard drives is not showing all the space that it use to. The hard drive in question is a 1 Tb hdd and was working fine in XP as were the other HDD's. When I installed Vista, all the other disk's worked fine except for this one. I have gone into Computer Management and it shows the drive as having 859 Gb of unallocated space that I cannot format. I am unable to create a New Simple Volume or any other volume types for this drive.
View 9 Replies View RelatedI recently re-arrange my 4 500GB SATA drives to provide better cooling. The system rebooted fine but every two or three days on booting Vista would kick me back to the BIOS starting screen, or, completely freeze, requiring a reboot. The system then wouldn't boot saying it couldn't find an operating system. Turning the computor off, and a restart would fix the problem until the next time. I resolved this by rearranging my hard drives so that Vistas C drive was the Motherboards logical boot drive. An obvious solution. My question is two fold. Why would BIOS find the Boot Drive sometimes and not others (The disks are not faulty), I perhaps don't fully understand how SATA operates. I have had no further problems to date.
View 4 Replies View RelatedI recently purchased a new system with Vista Home Premium 32bit OS. I have a couple of hard drives (Maxtor) that I would like to recover some files from but when plugged into the new computer, they just don't register. Can't see anything when using IDE or have the hard drives on an adaptor for SATA. The old drives do have XP Pro on them. Is there a clash between OS? How can I read and recover the info I need? I have gone to the Microsoft site to make sure I have all the updates. I have gone to Maxtor to download the up to date installation software. Still nothing. I have checked the BIOS and the SATA ports are initiated (and have talked to the manufacturer HP about the issue and they can't see a problem). I have been able to recognize the old hard drives when I still had the old computer (cleaned it up and gave it to my son with a new hard drive installed). Would like to recover data and start using the old drives as a back up system.
View 4 Replies View RelatedThere's a mystery drive partition on my system. confirm what it's used for/by? I'm running a triple boot of Server x64 RC2, Vista x64 SP1 RC, and Vista x86, installed on two internal hard disk drives. These are SATA drives, but not hybrids. They both have 8MB caches. (One is a Samsung HM250JI. The other is a Hitachi TravelStar 7K100.) I also have 1GB of Intel's Robson NAND. Now, in Disk Management, a 513MB (sic) FAT32 partition is there, called NVCACHE. It's listed as its own HDD, sandwiched between HDD 0 and HDD 1. So, there are two possible explanations as far as I can see: 1st candidate explanation: There's an Intel page that discusses Turbo Memory, which uses the "NVCACHE" term when describing its support for Vista ReadyDrive and "T13 specification Command Handling," which I had assumed applied just to hybrid hard drives, not to regular HDDs.
The other thing that's fishy is the 513MB cache size. Where'd the remaining 511MB go if this system has a full 1GB Robson NAND? Was I gyped out of 512MB of NAND? 2nd candidate explanation: This has something to do with the SATA caching functionality that I have enabled in the x86 partition. [See: Device Manager -> Disk Drives -> right-click on a SATA drive -> Properties -> Policies -> Enable Write Caching on the Disk -> Enable Advanced Performance.] If that's the purpose, then the question is: Do I need to confine my use of the SATA cache to one OS installation, or am I safe to enable this function in all of the OSes simultaneously? (Will overwrites by different OSes of each others' caches destabilize the system or not?)
Windows Vista operates external hard drives that are connected with USB differently than internal drives. Write caching is disabled so that you can safely remove the drive at almost any time. This is a great feature for USB thumb drives that are frequently inserted and removed from your computer. But if you have a large hard drive that is in an external enclosure that you never disconnect from your computer, write caching is also disabled which can decrease performance.
This tweak is going to show you how to increase the performance of your external hard drives by turning write caching back on as well as activating advanced performance. Let’s get started: ...
i just built this new computer, and i installed two 250 gig hard drives. the bios recognize both drives just fine but windows is not. it only lists me as having one C: drive with 250 gig and the other one is not listed at all. is there some setting in windows that i need to enable?
View 7 Replies View Relatedive noticed that my hard drives are loud at weird times? when im not doing anyting? its very annoying? is this vista or my hard drives?
View 6 Replies View RelatedI have built a new system to game with and have 2 new hard drives, on one I put XP Pro and then on the other I loaded Vista. I have more or less completed all the driver upgrades and windows updates but I keep getting repeated boot failures of Vista. I can always get into Safe mode but in Normal mode the boot fails just after the first spash screen at the point when the screen goes blank to be replaced by the small circular
Vista logo. After 2 or 3 attempts it succeeds to load but then the problem seems to reoccur, particularly when I have been back to XP for a while. I had a similar problem with XP but that seems to have sorted itself out. I have tired looking in the logs for faults and failures but no clues there.
I created file backups on two removable network hard drives so I can regularly do incremental backups on the alternative disks. I want to keep one disk offsite and switch them regularly. When I try to alternate backup network hard drives the incremental backups fail. Message reads: ???The backup location cannot be found or is not valid.??? How can I regularly make incremental backups to these alternating removable network hard drives?
View 4 Replies View RelatedI have two physical hard drives. Both are identical. I want to move my Page File to my second drive to see if I get a performance increase. I did some research and learned that you must keep a small page file on your C drive because Windows writes a small amount of data to the C drive upon boot. Does anybody have experience with this setup?
View 4 Replies View RelatedI'm using Vista Home Premium x64. I was attempting to back up some external drives to each other. I had previously used Robocopy on Windows XP with much success, so I thought I would do the same. I initially just manually copied and pasted an external drive designated "G:" into a folder within another external drive designated "I:" (so for example I:Backup1). The files were present and looked all good after this.
Today, I ran Robocopy to try to mirror those two, however as soon as I finished, the "Backup1" folder disappeared from "I:". The files however are present, as I can tell from the space used on "I:" and on top of that, when I try to make a new folder with the same name ("Backup1"), it won't let me, saying that a folder by that name is already present. Other folders (that do not have any data yet) are still present within "I:" The Robocopy script is basically Robocopy "G:" "I:Backup1" /MIR /XA:SH /XD AppData /XJD /R:2 /W:2 /V /ETA /Z /LOG:Backuplog.txt
I have hard drives from both Win 98 SE and XP machines. I currently use a system with Vista 32. Is it possible to hook up these drives to my Vista machine and transfer the data to the Vista drive?
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